


the dark night of my soul had been blacking you out

by kittysorceress



Series: In which Ariana Dumbledore does not die during the duel [2]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A small amount of redemption-appropriate angst, Alternative Universe - Ariana lives, Autumnal and cosy themes, F/M, M/M, Obscurial Ariana Dumbledore, Redemption, Samhain bonfires, Second Chances, The happy ending that a grown-up Ariana deserves, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:14:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27175048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittysorceress/pseuds/kittysorceress
Summary: Fourteen years after the duel in Godric's Hollow, Gellert Grindelwald returns to the Dumbledore family, now living in Hogsmeade.It seems almost too easy to return to old habits, as though there had been a Gellert-shaped gap in the family, just waiting for his return.But Ariana is restless.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald, Ariana Dumbledore & Gellert Grindelwald, Ariana Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald (one-sided)
Series: In which Ariana Dumbledore does not die during the duel [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1983532
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38





	the dark night of my soul had been blacking you out

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the HP Fanfiction Club Autumn Challenge, which gave the prompts Pumpkin, Leaves, Cider, Crisp, Sweater, Cuffing, Crimson and Pasties. I have tried to capture each of these themes in one way or another.
> 
> While this fic could be considered a sequel to _[the one you say you love is just the one you most mistrust](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23079556)_ in that it exists in the same AU timeline, it is intended to stand alone in its own right.
> 
> The title is from the song [All In My Head](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTp8dlfP2c0) by Missy Higgins.

The handsome young Hogwarts Professor of Transfiguration, his surly brother who worked at the Hog's Head, and their squib sister keeping house for them. The family in the cottage at the end of Kneazle Lane were something of a ponderance to the villagers of Hogsmeade.

They had moved to the village nearly twelve years earlier, when the professor had taken up his post at the school and the younger brother had just completed his NEWTS. Their sister, still barely more than a child, was a quiet girl who barely spoke two words together when greeted on the street. And there was a sadness to the family that seemed to be greater than the death of their mother or the imprisonment of their father, a bitterness between the brothers that could not be readily explained.

As the years went on, the family became as much a part of the village as anyone else. The professor would lend books from their little front-room library, the barkeep would happily lend a goat to take care of a neighbour’s overgrown lawn, and their sister would come to market each Wednesday with milk and fresh cheese and vegetables for sale. But still, even as they grew older and more settled in their ways, there was a sadness about them all. A simmering discontent.

Some of the villagers, particularly the older women, put it down to the tragedy of the poor sister. To be in the shadow of her brilliant and famous brother, to be so very becoming and kind, to keep house so well, but to not have any sort of proper magic to make her a real marriage prospect. She was not too old yet at twenty-four, or twenty-five, or twenty-six, they would say. And then, when she reached twenty-seven, they would sigh and comment that she might still make a happy bride to a widower. And yet, she never showed more than a passing interest in the young men put into her path.

Then, in 1913, something changed.

It began in February, with a new spring in the professors’ step, a brighter twinkle in his eye. He could be seen out and about in the village, reading passages from letters to his sister, smiling and laughing as he shared their contents. Soon after came the regular mysterious packages covered in strange foreign labels, carried carefully under his arm back from the castle. _I have a friend in Brazil_ , Albus would comment to his neighbours when they asked. _In Indochina_. _In Prussia_.

After a few months, the younger brother lost some of his gruffness and animosity towards the elder. Now, he seemed to gently tease his brother about the letters and the parcels and seemed less protective towards his sister. And in the Hog’s Head, an unusual array of foreign liquors began to line the top shelf. Aberforth would grin as he poured a drink from one of the strange bottles and tell his patrons, _Albus has a friend in Mexico. In Fiji_. _In Turkey_.

And dear Ariana… how she transformed over the summer. Where once her style had favoured classic blouses and straight skirts in subdued colours, she started to be seen in new slender dresses in becoming hues of blue and green and dusty pink. She always seemed to have a new hat or parasol or comb for her golden hair, which more often than not was curled into a fashionable tuck at her neck instead of the sensible braid she had worn for years. When the women at the market would ask where such beautiful items came from, she would smile and say, _we have a friend in New York. In Paris. In Milan._

On a market day in late September, one of the older women asks Ariana if she perhaps has a secret admirer among all those friends who seemed to be sending gifts to the family, maybe a young man who had caught her eye and is sending such fine and pretty things as a sign of his affection for her?

In reply, the younger woman merely throws her stylish head back and laughs and laughs and laughs.

* * *

_Herr G. Grindelwald_ _  
_ _c/- Headmistress Franklin_ _  
_ _The Coven of Brindabella Witches_ _  
_ _Snowy Mountains, Australia_

_Dear Gellert_

_Thank you for the little note enclosed in your latest to Albus, and for the glossy green feathers, and most of all for the new hat. It is just perfection and the colour goes marvellously well with the leather gloves from Italy. You have such an eye for these things._

_I have pinned the feathers to the board in the front-room library with the rest of your postcards and photographs from the past few months. It’s such a bright and cheerful collection now and it keeps me great company on those evenings when Albus is held back at the school and Aberforth is at the pub. I sit in my chair and imagine all those distant places and seeing all those wondrous sights and meeting all those interesting wizards and witches you describe in your letters and it makes me feel as though I am there alongside you._

_I am doing so much better now that the weather has cooled down properly and I can spend more of my day outside without risk of a sunburn. You should see how freckled I’ve gone with all the time I’ve spent in the vegetable garden and walking back and forth to town with the produce. It’s lovely to be able to bring in a little income from the surplus, but I think my life would be much easier if I was more able to manage the growth and harvest spells on my own without Aberforth’s help here and there. Still, magic or no, I’ve never had such excellent lettuces or radishes for my lunches than came from my little garden this summer past._

_On that note, my weekend lessons with Albus’ NEWT-level students are progressing nicely and I can manage some of the more basic charms and transfigurations now. I can even reliably turn matches to needles! It’s such good revision for the students to have someone to tutor, and the opportunity to learn the practical arts at my own speed, as slow as it is, is precisely what I’ve been missing. Thank you again for suggesting this approach to Albus, it’s been far more effective than anything the mediwitches at St Mungo’s has devised for cases like mine. (If there even are other cases like mine. There are times I feel that I am little more than a practice-puffskein to them, something to fuss over and study, but not to really care for.)_

_As for my eldest brother, I fear I see very little of him this term. Professor Black has increased his class load (As I’m sure Albus must have told you among those reams and reams of parchment he sends you each week! Surely they can’t all be love letters!) which means most mornings he goes up to the castle as soon as breakfast is done and frequently fails to make it home again in time for dinner. Some nights he even owls to say he’s staying behind and sleeping on the camp bed in his office! The nights he does stay home, he tends to sit at his desk and write and write and write… if not for the school or for his papers and articles, it’s letters to you, or to any of his many correspondents._

_I know there is little you can do from the other side of the world, but if you could convince him to give himself even a little rest, I know both Aberforth and I would appreciate it greatly._

_Safe travels on to New Zealand next week and watch out for those flightless birds. I hear some of them will eat your luggage if you are not careful._

_My fondest regards,_

_Ariana_

* * *

_Miss A. Dumbledore_ _  
_ _Creekside Cottage_ _  
_ _13 Kneazle Lane_ _  
_ _Hogsmeade, Scotland_

_Ariana_

_I hope you enjoy this postcard of the Antipodean Opaleye and that there is still room on your board to pin it._

_Ask your brother to share with you the news in my latest letter – he may even show you the whole first two pages without it offending your sensibilities._

_Bis bald!_

_Gellert_

* * *

At the cottage at the end of Kneazle Lane, three pumpkins stood pride of place on the front doorstep. Hand-carved with loving care, the jack-o’-lanterns shone bright and welcoming to those crossing the threshold of the Dumbledore home, ready for the arrival of the long-awaited guest.

Gellert paused for a moment and looked over the orange faces, inhaling a steadying breath of crisp night air. He was nervous, far more nervous than he expected to be. For a fleeting moment, he considered turning on his heel and apparating straight back to his aunt’s home.

It had been one thing to share a meal with Albus after crossing paths in February, to politely ask after each other’s exploits and adventures from the years that had passed.

Certainly, it had been easy enough to strike up a correspondence after that meeting, to send letters of increasing length and depth over the next months as Gellert had travelled the world on his Aunt’s work and Albus had seen out the school year.

It had been like time itself had never moved on from 1899 when Albus joined him for that blissful fortnight in Italy in July, two weeks of wine and food and nothing else but the other’s company, as though nothing had ever come between them and they were again teenagers in love with the whole world before them.

And though it had been tough to first write to Aberforth and Ariana, to apologise for who he had been at seventeen, it was as though a weight was lifted when he received their words of acceptance and encouragement. And he had been happy to send along the little oddities and trinkets Ariana asked after in each of her letters following that.

Yet it was quite another thing to be here at the Dumbledore family’s doorstep again, albeit a different and more northerly doorstep than Godric’s Hollow than the one he had become familiar with fourteen years earlier.

With another steadying breath, he knocked his knuckles against the heavy oaken door of the cottage.

* * *

In the middle of October, a handsome stranger comes along to the markets with Ariana. Tall, blond and impeccably dressed in a robe of deep crimson with a distinctive pendant around his neck, he laughs and flirts with the locals in his faint Germanic lilt. He handles the vegetables with care and recommends recipes to the housewitches. He conjures a pot of tea and offers warming cups to all of the stall holders, then sits and reads a newspaper in a language no one can recognise while Ariana takes over the sales again.

 _Who is he?_ The older women ask Ariana in sly whispers with suggestive glances.

 _Just Gellert,_ she replies, _just our friend Gellert._

They watch as Ariana travels back along the lane to the cottage, arm-in-arm with the handsome wizard, at the end of the day. By nightfall, the rumour mill is in full swing.

_Gellert Grindelwald. Bathilda Bagshot’s research assistant. Her nephew, the one from Austria._

_He was expelled from Durmstrang in ‘98, don’t you remember the scandal? He went to prison for those experiments when he was just seventeen!_

_I had no idea he knew the Dumbledores. I had no idea he was in Britain._

The next morning, the handsome stranger walks with Albus along the High Street and towards the Hogwarts gate. The men are too clever by far and well-practiced in discretion, and none of the villagers see how their hands brush gently, how they share the briefest of embraces as they part for the day.

Then a few days later, he can be seen lunching at the Hog's Head with Aberforth, sharing a large jug of beer, a plate of cheese and bread, and an intense conversation in a corner booth. None of the villagers know that they are debating no more than different methods of accounting for the pub, the possibilities of expansion and renovations, the flat upstairs that is sitting empty and would be perfect for a bachelor.

_Do you think he’s here for Ariana? Do you think he’s asking her brothers’ permission to wed?_

_Do you think he’ll stay?_

* * *

It seemed so easy to return so quickly into that same comfortable companionship that they had once shared in their youth. It was as though there had been a Gellert-shaped gap in the family, just waiting for his return.

The front-room library at the cottage soon became a researcher's office, the table at its centre covered with manuscripts and quills and books stuffed with haphazard bookmarks and notes. 

Each morning, once Albus had left for the day, Ariana would work in vegetable garden with Aberforth for a few hours while Gellert would produce a little more work on his own book of divination and philosophy, or else edit a chapter of history for his aunt, or journal his thoughts on the world. 

In the evenings, when Aberforth was tending bar at the Hog's Head, Ariana would curl up in her armchair by the fire with a muggle novel, while Albus would take the opposite seat and knit or grade essays and Gellert would lounge at his feet with a pile of reference books and a tricky piece of ancient magic to translate.

After a week, it was almost as though Gellert had been with them always. Always Albus’ shadow and Aberforth’s foil and Ariana’s friend. Always there to do the dishes, always there to help with the goats, always there to tell a story or offer a joke, always there to greet Albus with a kiss when he returned from the school.

But Ariana found a new restlessness stirring in her chest. 

Where once she had found a great comfort in the love and protection of her brothers, in the comfortable home they had made their own in Hogsmeade, in the little magic she had learned and the darker magic she had learned to control, now she had never felt so confined by the life she led. 

Gellert's presence had awoken something in her. Or, perhaps, reawoken, for now she _remembered_ how much she had wanted to leave with them as a child. How she had longed for adventure as much as her older brother, how she had longed for _revenge_ against those who had hurt her. 

She remembered with great lucidity at the strangest moments – brushing her hair, taking a book from the shelf – the speeches she had once heard them practicing in the kitchen. The marvellous rhetoric they once had fashioned and honed for their Greater Good. And now older, more aware of the ways of the world and much more aware of the _wrongness_ of those words, she found herself with a sudden appreciation of just how enticing anything, even the darkest and most cruel thoughts, was when it was said by Gellert, with his bright eyes and his gentle mouth. 

She could see how Albus had been swept up in the romance of Gellert’s persuasiveness all those years ago, and how he so easily fell in love once again. 

For years, she had been totally uninterested in any of the young men placed in her path by well-meaning neighbours and Albus’ colleagues. But now, she knew that she needed more than any of those men could give her. She wanted someone who wasn’t scared of her, who would nurture her, who would challenge her, who would love her.

As the end of October drew nearer, her magic rippled with a blurred _wantnotmine_ , a new tune much louder and stronger than the _hurtbadstop_ that she had tamed over the years _._

It screamed and sent shivers through her limbs when Gellert placed a guiding hand on her waist or nudged past her in the kitchen, or took her arm in his as they walked to market.

She would smile blythely as her neighbours asked whether they should be congratulating her on a happy occasion soon, her hands held tight behind her skirt and pushing against the swelling blackness bursting from her fingertips.

The darkness simmered under her skin and oozed danger from her pores as she watched Gellert follow Albus up the stairs to bed each night.

She wanted... but she could not have.

* * *

The night of Halloween, Samhain bonfires warm with ancient protective magic burned across Hogsmeade. With Albus at the Hogwarts Feast and Aberforth busy at the pub, Gellert and Ariana were left to manage the bonfire at Creekside Cottage on their own.

Ariana, dressed in a borrowed pair of her brother’s trousers and an old woolen jumper with her hair braided into a high bun, was already tossing old fence palings and fallen branches onto the roaring flames when Gellert emerged from his books. 

He helped himself to the cider Aberforth had left on a bench by the kitchen door and watched her go about her task of methodically walking from junk pile to bonfire and back again, until she noticed that he had joined her.

‘Aren’t you going to help me?’

‘That would rather spoil the fun of watching you do it,’ Gellert teased, taking another sip of cider. ‘I’m enjoying the view.’

Ariana’s face darkened with a flush, but Gellert noticed that she did not laugh in the way she might have done when he had first arrived. Not for the first time, he wondered what had come over his lover’s youngest sibling. 

He could feel a frizzle of dark magic radiating from her. It reminded him of a different time, of a bitter fight between friends and a young girl on the floor in a pool of her own blood. 

‘Sorry, that was rude of me. Let’s get these things ready for the fire.’ 

They worked until the bonfire pile was taller than the both of them. Gellert set the protective charms, while Ariana used what feeble wand-work she had to cast the flame. They stood quietly for a time, watching the flames catch along the branches and splutter on the wet leaves, then crackle and roar into a bright beacon.

‘You are getting much better at those spells, you know,’ Gellert commented lightly, breaking the silence between them. ‘You needn’t be ashamed.’

He turned and watched as Ariana moved back a little way from the fire, raising her free hand and twisting it mid-air. Blackness poured forth, and she smiled sadly as it spun around the flames and danced before them.

‘I’m obscurial, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It just… is. My magic won’t ever be quite the same as yours, or Albus’, or Aberforth’s.’

‘An Obscurus doesn’t act out like this without provocation,’ he noted carefully, ‘not without some great distress.’

Ariana made a small noise of agreement.

‘So might you tell me what has been bothering you the past two weeks?’

‘I’d rather not,’ she laughed uncomfortably. The blackness in the air pulsed.

‘Some people see Samhain is a time of cleansing and purification, of ritual release,’ Gellert explained, ‘If not by words, by deeds. Dancing through the flames, letting the smoke wash over them. By divination, seeking the truth of the coming year and embracing its plans.’

He retrieved his mug of cider and poured another for Ariana, who accepted the offering with both hands. The flames before them, ringed with darkness, continued to crackle.

‘It has been too easy to forget that you weren’t always here,’ Ariana began hesitantly, her gaze schooled away from Gellert and onto the flames, ‘I was so caught up in being pleased for Albus when you reconnected and so taken by your apologies and your pleasantries and your gifts, I had forgotten why we had ever parted ways.’

‘You wish to renege on your forgiveness, then?’

‘No.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I am happy that you returned. You have no idea how much it hurt Albus when you left, how it broke his heart to see you go.’

‘He told me to leave, so I did.’

‘I know.’

‘Leaving was all I could do. I loved him too much to say no.’

‘I _know_.’ 

Gellert said nothing in reply, watching warily as her magic continued to bubble and boil over. Taking one hand from her mug, Ariana flicked her wrist and sent frustrated darkness scattering across the garden. 

‘And really, that’s what hurts the most. Just how much you love him,’ continued Ariana in a shaking voice, ‘because since you arrived, it’s all I can see. And I’m just so… so very… _restless_. In some ways, I want what we never had, to be there when you and Albus change the world, to travel the world and have that life you promised me when I was young and naive. But that dream is long gone now, and until you arrived, I had no idea how very trapped I actually felt here, how unhappy I am keeping house and being a dutiful sister.’ 

She let out a soft noise of frustration and shook a little more darkness from her fingers.

‘I’m twenty-eight years old, I have no prospects. I’m a squib with no knowledge of the muggle realm and not enough of the _right_ magic to get by in the wizarding world. At this rate, I am going to spend the rest of my life in the shadow of my brothers and die an old maid who never knew anything of the world outside her own little cottage.’ 

Turning now to face Gellert, her face flushed red and her eyes bright with tears, she continued, ‘Most of all, I’m so jealous of the love you have for Albus. But I don’t know if it’s because I want that kind of love for myself, or if I want you for my own. And I hate myself for that.’

With that, the growing and shimmering darkness around the bonfire began to curl around Gellert’s feet. He reached out and let the black magic caress his hand and travel along his arms, swirl up to mess his hair. It sent a shiver down his back that had nothing to do with the cold night air.

‘Can I share a secret with you, Ariana?’ he asked gently, leading her to sit on the bench further away from the flames. The darkness thrummed and pulsed around them, but he did his best to ignore it as he poured them each another mug of cider. 

‘I would like nothing more to have the life that you lead. To belong to one place, rather than this nomadic life I lead. It was fine at first to travel the world for my aunt’s research, alone with nothing but my thoughts and my books. I felt that I was doing some great penance for my sins in denying myself what I wanted more than anything – to return to England and seek Albus out and ask him why he never replied to my letters in that first year, to beg his forgiveness. When I saw your brother in the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic in February, I realised that I had another chance. Taking that Portkey to Canada the next week, rather than apparating straight here to Hogsmeade, was one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life.’

Gellert could feel Ariana’s breathing calm and slow beside him as he spoke. The blackness began to subside around them. 

‘Ever since I arrived here, the prospect of having to leave in November and accompany my Aunt on her tour of the magical palaces of Europe has made me sick to my stomach. I have seen the world, but I want to be nowhere more than right here at the cottage. I want nothing more than to work on my book of philosophy and keep house with Albus and dream of our future together.’

‘That golden summer stretched to the end of time? I can’t imagine anything better for the both of you.’ Ariana laughed wistfully, shaking the dissipating black magic from where it was pooling around her feet. ‘Mind you, I can’t imagine Aberforth would willingly stomach more than a couple of weeks of that again!’

‘No indeed!’ 

The two of them sat in silence again for a stretch, sharing the last of the cider as the last of the obscurial magic slowly resorbed into his host. 

After a little while, there came the tell-tale squeak of the garden gate and the crunch of boots on gravel. When Albus appeared by the bonfire, he had the drawn and tired look of a man who had endured an evening of chaperoning at the end of an already interminably long week. 

‘The two of you look as low and worn out as I feel!’

‘Just a little heart-to-heart, nothing too serious,’ Gellert said dismissively, standing to kiss his lover in greeting. ‘How was the feast?’

‘Awful,’ Albus groaned, stifling a yawn as he did so. ‘I wonder sometimes why I chose to be a teacher. Transfiguration is fine, managing a burgeoning war between the Slytherin and Ravenclaw Seventh Years less so. Is there any cider left? I need a drink.’

‘All gone,’ Ariana replied tipsily, not looking away from the fire, ‘But I think there’s some more in the larder. If not, Aberforth will have hidden a bottle of firewhiskey under the kitchen sink. Shall I get it?’

‘No, no, you stay here. I’ll go change out of my work robes and pick it up on my way back out.’ With a quick kiss to his lover’s cheek, Albus left the two alone again.

Rather than return to the bench, Gellert warmed his hands by the fire and watched Ariana as she gazed into the flames. In his mind, she would always be that little girl who worshipped her brothers and wanted to be wherever the action was. But when he looked at her, he could see the woman she had become in his time away, how everything about her had softened in beauty and strengthened in resolve.

She deserved so much more than a life in Hogsmeade could offer. She deserved to see the world, to find love, to have the kind of future she longed for.

‘My dear Ariana, I have an idea.’

* * *

The villagers don’t quite know what to make of the changes that come to the Dumbledore family in November. 

As the last of the autumn leaves begin falling from the trees, they watch as boxes of belongings are carried into town and up to the Hog's Head. A few days later, it becomes clear that Aberforth has at long-last settled into the flat above the pub – a sign proclaiming ‘Closed For Improvements’ is nailed to the door, another a little lower declaring ‘All inquiries to Mr A. Dumbledore, Proprietor’.

 _Good for him_ , the villagers say among themselves, _about time someone took over that place properly._

Then, less than a week later, something far less expected happens. 

Ariana Dumbledore is seen boarding the Sunday train to London, wrapped in an expensive new travelling robe and carrying the latest in muggle-defying magical suitcases. She wipes tears from her eyes as she embraces her brothers and listens to their well-wishes and advice. As she turns to board the train, their friend stops her to place his pendant around her neck and a kiss on her forehead. When the train departs, she waves to the three from the window of her compartment and those who see her face in that moment say she has never looked so free.

_How strange to see her leave! I wonder where she is going?_

_Do you think the romance turned sour? Do you think her brothers are sending her away?_

It doesn’t take long for word to travel about Bathilda Bagshot’s lovely new assistant, the pretty blonde woman seen running errands in Godric’s Hollow and preparing for the author’s research tour. 

And so, it seems, Gellert Grindelwald is to stay in Hogsmeade. 

Some of the older women in Hogsmeade shake their heads and comment on the great pity in wasting such a beauty as Ariana’s on books and traipsing around the world, while others fret about what will become of those two poor bachelors left on their own at Creekside Cottage without a women’s influence or assistance. 

But Herr Grindelwald seems to manage the grocery orders at The Magic Neep without any fuss, and he brings the vegetables to market in Ariana’s stead on Wednesdays, and before long he has every draper, haberdasher and carpenter in the village up to the cottage for new wallpaper and curtains and cushions and furniture.

As the weather grows colder still, the villagers watch Gellert and Albus walk along the High Street each weekend. They are seen sharing a box of hot pumpkin pasties fresh from the baker or else a bag of sweets from Honeydukes as they peer through the shop windows and laugh at the wares on display at Zonkos, or stop by the Hog's Head and chat with Aberforth, or collect an order from Dervish and Banges, or browse the latest fashions in Gladrags, or send a parcel at the post office. And then, their newly-purchased wares tucked safely under their arms, they walk back along Kneazle Lane with their heads bent towards each other, whispering and smiling. 

_There go two of the greatest minds in the wizarding world_ , the villagers say _. I wonder what they could be talking about?_


End file.
